


Their Horror and Disgrace

by ObliObla



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Devil Face (Lucifer TV), Gen, Identity Issues, Season/Series 04, Suits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 02:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20127508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: Lucifer loves suits.





	Their Horror and Disgrace

**Author's Note:**

> For Luciferbingo prompt: suits
> 
> Stranger, cease to be my foe:  
On this mask your smiles bestow.  
I have modelled every crease  
To ensure the people's peace,  
Who go easy when they see  
Kindly love encasing me.
> 
> Mirror, mirror on the wall,  
Who is falsest of us all?  
He who wears a mask so well?  
If you cannot, he can tell:  
Just the person to devise  
Twenty suitable replies!
> 
> Only silence. Does my mask  
Hear no questions mirrors ask?  
But look. The eyes behind its face  
Blink their horror and disgrace.  
They know well what price was paid  
For the features I have made.
> 
> Sacrificial Mask-Peter Davison

Lucifer loves suits.

Loves them in their infinite variation and loves them more still for their familiarity for, in the West and for centuries, a man has been all but naked without one. The tailoring and cut and color may change, but the shirt, the coat and the trousers remain. Typically, he wears little else, and why should he? For the Devil is never naked even when unclothed, is never unmasked but when he allows it and is _never_ without his armor, not worked from leather or forged from steel or cast in bronze, but spun from cotton and woven from wool. Fashioned from performative humanity and formed from societal expectation.

But he is no human—he has no use for society except as audience, but how essential that is for a performer such as him. He, who thrives on the desires of others, or their fears, drawing their reactions as he once drew fire from the hearts of stars, plays at belonging, plucks at some thread of normality even as he strives to elevate himself above the masses. For he is of the divine but not divine; he is light but also darkness, and he adorns himself in mortal flesh and shadows.

The black suit with the white shirt today, he thinks, as he tames his hair until it’s perfectly coiffed, not a single strand out of place. He buffs his nails, applies kohl to his eyelids, anoints his wrists and neck with scent—a routine older than human settlement—and observes himself in the mirror. There is no imperfection in this form but the untempered emotion in his gaze, and he looks away, too pained to see such truth mired in his customary self-deception. He feels fire twist in his veins, and his fingers tighten against the sink basin. Porcelain comes away as dust in his hands, and he hisses, walks to the shower and washes them clean. The muck swirls around the drain before disappearing, and he runs the water for a few more moments, erasing even the barest traces of the break in his control. He forces himself to take a breath, and, when he turns back to the glass, his eyes are black and his skin remains pale and unblemished.

He leaves the bathroom and heads for the closet with its subtle aroma of fabric, with its quietness, with its security. Everything is always where he leaves it, and he breathes easier when his fingertips meet the fine cotton of his shirt, the wool of his trousers and jacket and socks, and, as he dons each garment, he builds his armament and his defenses.

Shoes come next—the Louboutins, soles as red as the square of fabric he carefully folds and tucks into his breast pocket. And, lastly and most importantly, he fastens his cufflinks with well-practiced precision; the shackles he imposes on himself so that no one else may press them upon him. He chooses his clothing as he chooses his punishments, for it is his purpose and he must fulfill it. There is a mirror in this room as well, but he turns away from it, knowing the suit is perfect just as much as he knows his expression remains uncontrolled.

He wears the guise of the Devil tonight, and yet, still, his glamour is flawed. The thought that perhaps his accoutrement is simply insufficient flits through his mind and he grasps at it with an unbalanced intensity he refuses to acknowledge, walking around his bed and down the short staircase, crossing over to the bookshelves.

Sometimes, he knows, other, more particular armors are required, and, for those, the closet is insufficiently sized. The rooms downstairs that adjoin the playroom are always well-stocked with various and sundry, though, more than enough to cater to nearly every desire, however esoteric or elaborate. For those more involved, there are always other options available, not that he has entertained anything with so much light in these weeks of darkness.

The true historical costuming has its own space, of course, climate controlled and tucked away, but sometimes one doesn’t need finely detailed worsted wool and settles instead for a terribly inaccurate but highly enjoyable horned helm in which to sing Wagner operatics whilst pedaling around the penthouse on a tricycle.

He closes his eyes and savors the memory; even tainted as it is with pain and fear and desperation, there is no moment so tormenting that it doesn’t bear the occasional repetition.

He leaves the main room, heads further down into the belly of the tower, approaching one of the few locked doors he allows, and reaches for the handle. The keypad blinks its assent when he runs a single finger down its side. There is no correct combination, but it opens at a touch regardless, and he enters, taking a moment to breathe in the tang of dyes, the flatness of fabric, and the many recollections they inspire. He moves around the room slowly—here only to behold his collection and, so, subdued from his customary _joie de vivre_—and trails his fingers over the softness of a pea coat, the roughness of leather armaments, the silkiness of a _robe de chambre_.

He rests here in the past—or this carefully cultivated sartorial approximation of its more splendorous elements—when the frenetic present whispers too much plasticity into his ears. He desires this, on occasion, not because it is the truth of humanity—for humans have always deceived themselves with their masks and their walls and their enforced smallness—but because he wants a different lie.

_This is who we are._

Every stitch and thread, each mortal hand spinning or weaving or sewing a specious promise into beautiful artifice.

_This is who we are. It has to be._

And he, the father of lies, who never partakes except to swallow his own draughts, wraps himself in their suffocating warmth and the heft of all their not so halcyon days, and buries his heart in the sands of the shores of oblivion.


End file.
